Expecting to see something here? Well, you’re not going to because the Amazon Kindle Fire omits a camera from its arsenal. Meaning, you won’t be able to snap any candid moments or have some video chat conversation with a friend.

Multimedia:

If you’ve purchased songs from the Amazon MP3 Store previously, you’ll naturally see all your purchased content under the cloud section when you select the ‘music’ header on the homescreen. Since it’s all stored in the clouds, you’ll need an active Wi-Fi connection to begin streaming, and at the same time, if you want to store them locally on the tablet, you have the option to do that as well. In terms of its presentation, there’s nothing out of the ordinary with its conventional approach, as it’s able to display the album cover and on-screen controls – also, we can quickly jump back to it by selecting it in the notifications panel. With its two speakers, it’s blessed with some profound tones that exhibit plenty of volume at the loudest setting without experiencing any hint of crackling or distortion.

Music player

The Amazon music store

Purchasing the Amazon Kindle Fire, owners are treated to a free 30-day membership with Amazon Prime, which allows you to stream unlimited videos for free from its catalog. Even though the selection of movies and television shows aren’t as comprehensive as what’s offering by Netflix, it’s just nice having access to them in the first place for free. In terms of quality over a Wi-Fi connection, it’s surprisingly decent with minimal artifacting or noise – plus, there’s even an option to resume a video at the point where you last left off on. Of course, you can always resort to purchasing newer videos for a certain price, but the free streaming option isn’t shabby at all. And if you have a Netflix account, you can take advantage of the app that’s available for the Kindle Fire ecosystem.

Amazon Prime

Video playback

Unfortunately, the Kindle Fire wouldn’t recognize any of our test videos, which are encoded in DivX, H.264, MPEG-4, and Xvid. However, we managed to get our 1080p MPEG-4 test video to work after downloading the Meridian Player from the Amazon Kindle Fire app store. Thankfully, its playback performance is consistent with some good detail, smooth frame rate, and natural looking colors. All in all, it’s undoubtedly a suitable option for watching videos on the road.

Reading is undeniably one of the major reasons why some people would purchase the Kindle Fire, and just like other Kindle products before it, the experience is more than fitting now that color is part of the mix. Making it very easy on the eyes, there are a variety of options that we can fine tune to better enhance the reading experience – like changing the font, text size, margins, line spacing, and color mode. If you happen to select a word by long pressing it, you’re given its detailed definition, plus the option to search it on Wikipedia or Google. Flipping through pages is accomplished by executing swipe gestures, but it’s not the smoothest that we’ve seen – albeit, it’s not much of a distraction.

There are a variety of options that we can fine tune to better enhance the reading experience

Out of the box, we’re only offered 6.54GB of internal storage, which is quaint by today’s standards. Even worse, there’s no way to actually expand that amount locally since there is not microSD card slot. Still, Amazon is banking on having owners rely on its cloud services to better manage storage, which obviously works just as long there’s an active data connection.

13 Comments

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With some light hacking you can get the Android Market and added devices. On that note except for the Google Suite Apps Amazon Marketplace has most of the apps most people will use, I use it because they run some pretty sweet app deals on paid apps.

sounds neat for light users. almost like an introductory tablet for the older generation :)

that stuttering was probably caused by the system dumping information in the ram because it got too full and reloading more. That should be able to be optimized better with a software update. Kinda sad that they didnt go with a higher amount of ram though. But for people that are just gonna use it for media, they probably wouldnt even notice or care.

I want the Kindle Fire and I ain't old, I am 16 and have a Windows Phone and Android device and an iPad, I don't want it because other devices are too confusing, but because I am very involved in the Amazon ecosystem, I purchase stuff from there all the time, and they have all the media I need (News, Mags, Books, Music, Movies, TV, Apps)

So it's not because I'm to old or stupid to understand a normal android tablet, it's because this is what fits alot of peoples needs, for a great price.

im not worried about the younger generation. anyone under 25-30 is pretty much born wired into electronics. The majority of the older generation has trouble understanding the value of such devices (i deal with it every day) as they didnt use anything like this in their life. The low cost of entry and easy use set up will help them decide to take the chance on this "new" tech. Hence, "introductory tablet for the older generation".

Someone who is unsure if they are going to use it or not is more than likely not going to drop 600 on an ipad or Tab, but this super cheap price wont have that problem as often.

I didnt say anything about the younger generation, and i didnt say it was ONLY for old people. Dont misconstrue comments.

Not sure it's that CellularNinja "misconstrues comments," it's that your comment was viewed almost as an insult to younger users.

A proper reply to his comment would have been, "Sorry, I didn't mean for my comment to be taken that way, let me rephrase." Rather, you said, "you misunderstand my point." Really, it's your inability to clearly state your point that caused the issue.

No crap. Even without all the issues listed, I'd rather buy literally any other tablet out there (okay, maybe not one of those cheap Android 2.x.x tablets), but that's okay for Amazon because I'm not in their target demographic. I'm a tech-oriented youth who is attracted to large screens, snappy performance, and getting the most I can possibly get out of a tablet, regardless of price. Therefore, I'm more attracted to something like the Transformer Prime or the iPad 2. Amazon is targeting someone COMPLETELY different, given its price-tag and established competency in e-readers. For instance, one target demo I see for the Fire is middle-aged women who want to read a book and carry out basic features of a tablet without having to pay triple the price for an iPad (i.e. my mom). I've noticed that people on this site are very quick to deride a product without realizing that just because the product doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean the product doesn't appeal to anyone else, with the exception of the Xoom, of course, which didn't appeal to anyone.

Seems great for the price. Not a replacement for an ipad or transformer but for half the price you cant go wrong if you're mainly in it for media, web browsing, and books. Other tablets at that price range normally are much worse in performance.

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